The Philippines is blessed with a very high biodiversity, including the plants living in its remaining forest cover. Trees alone comprise about 3500 species. Just to research on a species a day would take about 10 years to finish all of just the trees. Then there are still the shrubs, herbs, ferns etc. Through this blog we hope to introduce you to some important plants in the forest before they completely disappear because of habitat destruction.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Toy Stories

I will blog about my other love, toys! Animal toys are much easier to find than plant toys. Probably because lively animals seem more exciting as toy subject than sessile plants. It is most likely you could find dinosaurs, insects, mammals, frogs, lizards, fish toys than orchids, aroids, ferns etc. A kid might probably aspire to create a toy zoo than a toy garden. I think you get my drift that it is hard to find plant toys.

But plant toys do exist but are harder to spot than the animal ones. I only have a few myself. The other day I was cleaning my old room and came across the very few left in my collection. Before I had a little more but regretfully gave them away as gifts.

The first set are miniature handmade flowers in pots - made in Singapore. I bought them from a small shop in Ortigas which sadly is now closed. I used to have many of these, mostly orchids. I remembered having Phalaenopsis and Cattleya similes. Now what remains are 3 pots, a red orchid which I could not identify, a Paphiopedilum (slipper orchid) and a Nymphaea (water lily).

The others are a set of plastic carnivorous plants, which I chanced upon a few years ago in a Japanese game arcade. These are capsule toys in bubble gum dispensers. I remembered shelling out about 2000 yen just to get 10 capsule toys. The complete set included 5 carnivore species but unfortunately I was not lucky to get the coveted Venus flytrap. Instead I got the four other pitcher plant species and duplicates (the doubles I also gave away as pasalubong to some friends). The most prized is the Nepenthes alata which is a Philippine native.

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About Me

Hi! My name is Patrick Gozon and I am a plant enthusiast. I did my graduate thesis on the use of Philippine native trees and shrubs in landscape architecture. I hope to share with you interesting facts I learned and collected about Philippine native flora.